Thursday, September 3, 2015

Bank transfer is outdated

During living in London, I had some troubles about sending money.

I opened a bank account in the UK in addition to the main bank in Japan. But international transfer from Japan to the UK was expensive. Furthermore, sending a large amount of money required an authorization, which means that I had to visit the bank in Japan on my own.

Also, I was involved in a trouble when I intended to send the money to the US bank for the payment of publication fee of an academic article. Although I asked the bank to proceed the transaction, the bank staff failed to carry it out. I had to confirm repeatedly if the transaction was finished. It took a couple of weeks.

For these episodes, I became to distrust the bank.

Sending money is no more complex procedure. You can minimize the transaction fee with some ways. Bitcoin is theoretically the cheapest way to make an international transfer. You have to pay only several cents for the transaction. However, it will also take costs to change Bitcoin into real currency to save them in the bank account.

Recently, PayPal launched a service in which you can easily send money to others. It takes no extra cost in an individual use.

Nowadays, the money is almost no more than the digital record. Billionaires do not equip a wallet. They can use money as much as they want with a simple signature.

Regardless of the future for Bitcoin, I think that the cost for international transaction will be reduced. Also exchanging will not be needed in the near future. Then, the banks will be forced to reconsider their business.